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Social Control in Slave Plantation Societies: A Comparison of St. Domingue and Cuba

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a key premise is the "myth" of spanish slavery being more "humane" than northern european forms; if that's the case, then what differences can we expect to see in the mechanisms of social control? hall's book is a good synthesis of the literary record dealing with slavery in cuba and st. domingue (haiti). although it deals primarily with these two island societies, it is really a commentary on french and spanish slave systems throughout the caribbean region. hall samples a great deal from french laws pertaining to st. domingue, specifically from leogane, port-de-paix, port-au-prince, and cap-haitien, but also draws from sources in martinique and guadeloupe. moreau de saint-méry's massive work on hispaniola figures prominently in the text. she uses this same methodology for the cuban/spanish side, borrowing frequently from codes from other spanish colonies. this is a good effort at making a more robust archive for these two societies, but without much explanation on the different types of plantation economy in the areas from which she is drawing (i.e., sugar plantations vs. tobacco or coffee ones, which would impact time in the field, etc.), there's much more she could do to make a stronger comparison. the book was written when studies in comparative slavery were gaining currency among historians, that is, during a shift away from seeing the plantation as the chief interpretive analytic type and toward other institutional similarities.